


Extract 
From the Report a: SBS ry. 


PRESIDENT 
JOHN FRANKLIN GOUCHER 


To the Annual Meeting of 


The Board of Trustees 


of 


: ie | The Woman's College of Baltimore 


&; 





INCEPTION 


‘The purpose to create a great school of highest college 
grade, for the education of women as women, to be located 
in Baltimore and under the general direction of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church, had its birth in the summer of 
1883. After a vigorous and protracted debate running 
through three days, the Baltimore Annual Conference at 
its session in March, 1884, gave the project its endorse- 
ment, provided the Committee should secure at least 
$200,000 before it incorporated. ‘This condition was met 
and The Woman's College of Baltimore was incorporated 


in 1885. 

The Start The plans were patiently formulated, 

the nucleus of a faculty carefully 

selected, the main building completed and the College 
opened September 13, 1888, with thirty-nine students, 
only four of whom were of Freshman grade; a fifth 
entered later and these five constituted the first graduating 
class in 1892. 
August 31, 1904, the College closed her 
; sixteenth year of organized work and 
attained to the age of legal consent, a modest, comely and 
vigorous maiden, universally admired and confided in 
wherever known. 


Infancy 


The sixteen years of her infancy were years of experi- 
ment, organization, probation and achievement. 


EXPERIMENT 


Had the management of ‘The Woman’s College of 

Baltimore been willing to ignore the essential facts of 
woman’s nature, and been unmindful of woman’s essential 
functions to the race and to society, or had they been satis- 
fied with less than the greatest excellence attainable, or 
had they attempted to provide only another college of 
the same pattern as those organized and maintained to 
meet the demands which business and society make upon 
young men, but to which young women should be 
admitted ; that is, had they attempted to establish another 
man-making college for woman-making purposes, their prop- 
osition had been very different and less questioned. Even 
then it would have required the experiment and a demon- 
stration to remove the deep-rooted and generally enter- 
tained doubt as to its being possible or desirable to develop 
and maintain a college for women in the southland. 
The area of this doubt was widened and 
its gravity increased by the purpose to 
develop a great college specifically for women, Christian 
in ideal and atmosphere, which should sacrifice nothing of 
thoroughness, nor lower in the least the highest standards 
anywhere attained, yet so adjust and co-ordinate the work 
and conditions that all would tend to develop womanly 
women, qualified to be a helpmeet for man at his best. 


ORGANIZATION 


Three difficulties in particular confronted the organi- 
zation. ‘These pertained to the location, equipment and 
finance. 


Complications 


2 


The location is in the South where there 
were no established ideals of serious and 
sustained intellectual work for women, no demand for 
college-bred women, no system of schools, public or pri- 
vate, leading up to college entrance, while the traditions 
and customs were averse to lengthened years of prepara- 
tion before young women enter society. 

The equipment included among other 
things the designing and construction of 
buildings, the defining and co-ordinating of the courses 
of study with reference to the clearly defined purpose, the 
selection of a faculty in which the specialist and Christian 
personality should be combined with experience and apt- 
ness to teach, the development of a student atmosphere, 
thoroughly sane, reverent and Christian, the providing for 
and regulation of physical exercise and the social life, the 
procuring of the most modern and most accurate scientific 
apparatus, the gathering, from all parts of the world, of 
books, manuscripts and other material suitable to illus- 
trate history, sociology, literatures and the physical sci- 
ences, and further it required the securing of a steady 
supply of students through the cultivation and develop- 
ment of secondary, or preparatory schools for girls, as 
feeders, which should so combine thoroughness and com- 
prehensiveness, drill and inspiration as to develop ability 
and desire for the most advanced college training. 

More serious than the absence of ideal 
and demand, harder than developing the 
equipment, gathering the apparatus and illustrative mate- 
rial or regulating the physical and social conditions, more 


Location 


Equipment 


Finance 


3 


difficult than stimulating the desire and securing adequate 
preparation for such work, has been the financial problem. 
Had this been simplified, the results in the other directions 
would have been multiplied. 

Competition to be successful must not be 
upon a lower plan of equipment and 
eficiency than that with which it would compete. “To 
start Ihe Woman’s College of Baltimore with an equip- 
ment which would command confidence when compared 
with the equipment, plus the prestige which the best col- 
leges had acquired through years of growth, was expensive. 
It required many hundreds of thousands of dollars. “These 
funds had to be procured from a limited constituency with- 
out phenomenal wealth or exceptional liberality, for an 
object untried, and concerning which the demand was 
seriously questioned. 


Essentials 


PROBATION 


The undertaking was not greeted with 
a hearty welcome or cordial sympathy. 
There were exceptions to this, notable and never to be for- 
gotten, but the usual attitude was indifference and in 
some quarters the College was considered an intruder, 
a protest and an impertinence, and her reception was not 
unlike that accorded to a girl baby in caste-curst-India. 
She was required to struggle for her existence within 
conditions of exceptional severity, sometimes covertly or 
openly intensified by those who might have been expected 
to befriend her. She was kept upon a most keenly scru- 


Reception 


4 


tinized and severely criticised probation and approval was 
withheld till her success was demonstrated. 
: She was never heard to complain of her 
Devotion to conditions, but patiently, persistently and 
Ideal prayerfully adhering to her ideal, she 
made it her one business to grow in excellence and demon- 
strate her efficiency. 


ACHIEVEMENTS 


Nor have her achievements been few 
or insignificant. She has acquired six 
acres of ground in the best residential part of the city, mid- 
way between the future home of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity and the Peabody Conservatories of Music and 
Art, and has erected nine buildings, second to none in the 
country for the purposes for which they were designed. 

Her faculty, numbering twenty-four, is composed of 
specialists of exceptional acquirements, devotion and effi- 
ciency. 


Property 


f The teaching staff during the past six- 

Teaching teen years has included fifty-seven, of 

Staff whom she never failed to retain any 

one she desired to have continue, except when the separa- 

tion was caused by ill health or marriage. As she stands 

for womanliness, she would not discourage any teacher 

from finding her natural and highest adjustment. Twenty- 

one members of the faculty have married and one has died. 

One-third of the present staff has been with the College 
ever since their departments were differentiated. 


She has on her shelves or in her cabinets 
over one hundred and twenty thousand 
specimens of historic or scientific value, 
collected from all parts of the world for illustrative use in 
the various departments of her work. 

The apparatus is modern and has been 
steadily increased as the demands of her 
developing work have required. Leading biologists have 
said that she has the best equipped Biological Laboratory 
for college work in the United States. Her Chemical and 
Physical Laboratories are also well equipped. 

Stud There were thirteen hundred and thir- 
ludems teen students in attendance during these 
sixteen years, representing nearly every state and terri- 
tory in the country and many foreign nations. 

Four hundred and sixty-nine prepara- 
Preparatory hools | ted her standards 
Saree tory schools have acceptec st 
are pleased to meet her requirements, 
and have sent of their graduates to her entrance classes. 
Very many of these schools were required to strengthen 
their faculties, improve the quality of their instruction and 
increase the quantity of their work before they were 
accepted as certificating schools. The Girls’ Latin School 
has been created and developed during this time and no 
school of its class outranks it, is doing better work nor has 
a brighter future. 


Illustrative 
Material 


Apparatus 


Five hundred and twenty-five of her 
students have been advanced to the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts in the thir- 
teen classes she has graduated, and these are making excel- 


6 


Bachelors 
of Arts 


lent records in the widely scattered communities where 
they live. Seventy-nine of these were in the class gradu- 
ated last June. 
Over ninety of the four hundred and 
Post-Graduate 

forty-six who had graduated previous to 

Work 

last June have pursued at least one year 
of post-graduate work in the leading universities and tech- 
nical schools of Europe and America, some with great dis- 
tinction and all with credit to themselves and their Alma 
Mater. Last year the University of Heidelberg conferred 
upon one of them the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 
magna cum laude. But once before had that University 
conferred that honor upon a woman. ‘The University of 
Chicago recognized the excellent work of another by con- 
ferring the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, also, magna 
cum laude. 
To the thirty-two who have attended 
Columbia, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Cor- 
nell, Yale and the Bryn Mawr Graduate Department, 
twelve fellowships have been awarded by these institu- 
tions, and the winning of other fellowships, graduate 
scholarships and other honors both in Europe and America 
has been of frequent occurrence. 
‘Twenty-six have taken their second 
degree and in some cases their third 
degree, and it has been asserted by uni- 
versity men that from no other college does so large a 
percentage of its women graduates pursue post-graduate 


Fellowships 


Second 
Degree 


work. 


Phi Beta Kappa, organized in 1776, a 
purely literary and honorary fraternity, 
jealously guarding its reputation by 
most careful scrutiny of the quality of the institutions to - 
which it gives chapter privileges, at the last session of its 
Council granted a chapter to The Woman’s College of 
Baltimore. “The Woman’s University Club of New York 
City welcomes the Woman’s College alumne. 

One hundred and sixty of her graduates 
were teaching during the past year, 
twenty-five in colleges, sixty in high schools, and seventy- 
five in private schools, academies and grade schools. In 
Barnard College, in Vassar, in The Woman’s College of 
Baltimore, in Columbia University, in the Woman’s Col- 
lege of Lucknow, India, and in other colleges and schools 
less conspicuous but just as important, as well as in secre- 
tarial and other positions of trust they have made a good 
accounting of their attainments and personality. 

One is World Secretary of the Young 
Woman’s Christian Association with her 
office in London, another has been called to England to 
introduce Deaconess work among the Presbyterian 
churches of Great Britain. India, Japan, Syria and other 
mission fields are blessed through the devotion and saintly 
living of others. 


Phi Beta 
Kappa 


Teachers 


Missioners 


But perhaps nowhere are her graduates 
exerting a more hallowed and normal 
influence than in the marital relation. Over one hundred 
have married and in consecrated homes are performing 
the highest functions of life. Those who have not yet 


8 


Marriage 


attained to this highest adjustment, as. well as those who 
have, are giving their lives, with their acquirements of 
knowledge and attainments of culture to acts of charity 
and works of benevolence, and are a vital, constructive 
force in home, church and society. Wherever they are 
confronted by serious or unusual problems or conditions, 
their eficiency is demonstrated. “These things have been 
true of all her graduates, with scarcely an exception. 
Her experimental stage is passed; her 
probation has been accomplished, for by 
her achievements she has been judged; her graduates are 
welcomed, honored and sought wherever they are known 
and worth is appreciated. 


Demonstration 


Her organization is endorsed by word 
Endorsement 
and patronage, as well as by that most 
subtle and most genuine of all commendations, imitation. 
The ideals of The Woman’s College of Baltimore are 
gaining ground in high educational centres all over the 
land, so much so that there has been many a modification, 
more or less radical, in leading institutions, and in the 
attitude of prominent discussions in regard to the college 
education of women, the trend of which is toward the 
ideal and methods which The Woman’s College of Balti- 
more was created to conserve and illustrate. 
‘There is very much yet to be done not 
Further 
Bey elopiient by abandonment of any ideal for which 
she has contended, but by the enlarge- 
ment and natural development of that which she has 
already commenced. Everything is encouraging save her 
debt. The maiden has attained to her majority, able and 


9 


eager to serve, with a peculiar commission, a charming | 
personality, rare prestige and demonstrated efficiency. Her 
debt is the only discount upon her prospects for gracious 
and widening service. 
h Ouil To establish The Woman’s College of 
Cash Outlay Baltimore and The Girls’ Latin School 
of Baltimore, two great and entirely distinct institutions, 
each grading in the first rank of its class, and to accom- 
plish all which has been achieved in these sixteen initial 
years has required a cash outlay of $2,800,000; one-half 
of this sum, or $1,400,000, has been invested in ground, 
buildings, equipment and endowment, the other $1,400,000 
has been spent for the running expenses and for interest. 
Deb Against the entire expenditure there is 
ept a debt of $459,000. None of this is 
chargeable to the running expenses of the College. All of 
it is chargeable to the land, buildings and original equip- 
ment. The debt of $459,000 is about fifteen per cent. of 
the total outlay for the twenty-one years since the enter- 
prise was first projected. ‘This is a deficit of less than one 
per cent. per annum of the entire outlay since the College 
commenced organized work sixteen years ago. 
The Woman’s College of Baltimore 1s 
fully justified by her past; $500,000 
would make her present absolutely solid and secure her 
future beyond a peradventure. She needs other buildings, 
increased endowment and enlarged facilities to meet the 
demands which confront her and make good the promise 
of her youth. If the burden of the debt were removed she 
could wait for her natural growth to provide these. 


Necessities 


Io 


About sixteen per cent. of the investment already made 
is all that is between her and a superb life of perpetual 
and blessed ministry. 

‘The disastrous fire of February last crip- 
pled her resources and retarded her 
progress. Baltimore is courageously 
reconstructing her places of business and sacrificing hero- 
ically to accomplish this. Is not the Christian training of 
her daughters the business of Christianity? Shall not 
chivalrous Baltimore and the generous Americans else- 
where, stewards of God who giveth the power to get 
wealth, do for The Woman’s College of Baltimore, with 
its responsibility for the Christian training of immortal 
souls, as well as they are doing for factories, mills, shops, 
stores and offices, given over to material things which 
perish in the using? 

I have no doubt it will be so. ‘There 
are evidences of it already. Of the 
$500,000 essential to the continued efh- 
ciency of the College, $100,000, or twenty per cent., has 
been pledged since the fire on condition that the other 
$400,000 are secured. In the judgment of many who have 
wide vision and accurate knowledge of the conditions, 
nothing more important nor more urgent can demand the 
sympathy, the generosity, the sacrifice of those who believe 
in God, in righteousness and in the judgment to come. 


Baltimore 
Fire 


Preferred 
Investment 


II 








